


Rise of Phoenix

by WinterXAssassin



Series: Project: WRAITH [1]
Category: Halo (Video Games) & Related Fandoms
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Wings, Angst, Flashbacks, Halo: Reach, Lots of owies, Mystery, Not Canon Compliant, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Canon, Retcon, Science Experiments, Spartans DO HAVE EMOTIONS, Timeline What Timeline, What Have I Done, because I love angst
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-29
Updated: 2018-06-18
Packaged: 2019-04-29 15:44:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,181
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14475921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WinterXAssassin/pseuds/WinterXAssassin
Summary: Once, there was a Spartan of Beta Company, Artemis-B312. And then, the Office of Naval Intelligence took her away from her kin, used her as their hyper-lethal vector.Once, Spartan-B312 was mortally wounded on the battlefield. ONI found her and rebuilt her into something new; something different, and continued to set her against their enemies.Now?Well...





	1. Prelude

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, yeah, this is an AU. The timeline fits more with what _actually_ happened in canon, a la _Fall of Reach_ (the book), in that Reach didn't have a month-long campaign; rather, it was a four-hour slaughter. Noble Team still exist, but their lineup is short a man after Thom-A293's death on Fumirole. Their role is also very, _very_ different in the story, meaning at times, they'll seem rather out of character. Not to worry though, because this is just an AU! Meaning events happened differently; meaning that the characters have been shaped differently by their pasts. Artemis-B312, as seen in the series _From Team To Family_ is the main focus once again - actually, it focuses a _little_ more on her this time - and she, too, is a different character. 
> 
> Sorry this first chapter is so short, but as the title says, it's merely a prelude. A taste of what's coming up next! Hopefully I'll work on the proper first chapter soon! :D  
> Anyway, enjoy, and remember, _this is an alternate universe, and canon divergent_. So please don't hate me for what I write here.

Gunfire chattered behind her; louder, closer than before. An explosion went off, too close for comfort, and she jinked to the left to dodge. Her feet pounded the pavement, and her breaths came in short, sharp gasps. They were coming for her. She had to _run_ ; had to _move_ ; had to get out of there. But she was running out of time, out of energy; they were closing in.

_No! I will not let you have me again! Monsters…_

She was sobbing for breath, now, tears blurring her vision. She could hardly see, but she knew these paths well. Her feet would not fail her now. They hadn’t before; they never would. Unlike everything else in her life, her feet had never let her down. Never taken her astray. Never caused her to get lost, or to falter, or to step onto the wrong path.

She leaped, arms pinwheeling, soaring through the air, and dropped to a roll at the last second. She popped up, and was on her feet and running again in a heartbeat.

 _You will_ never _have me! I was never yours…_

She cried out, suddenly, as sharp, white hot pain spread through her back, radiating throughout her body.

“You… _bastards_!” she rasped, wheezing, stumbling. _They shot me._

_No… NO! Never again… never again._

Another shot rang out, punching through the meat of her thigh, and she staggered, steps faltering. _No… please… anything but this._ Still, she pushed herself, continued on, though she was sluggish now; not the liquid grace she had been before. No longer did she move as fast as mercury; she was as slow as a river during flooding season. A third shot cracked through the air, and the Spartan crumpled to the ground in a heap, like a puppet with its strings cut.

 _Please… please don’t take me. I’ll do anything you want. I’ll even kill for you again, but please,_ please _don’t take me back there…_

They were surrounding her now, guns drawn and pointed at her head. She raised her palms, a fog clouding the corners of her vision, her ears ringing. It was too late. They’d gotten her; they were shackling her, lifting her up, dragging her back. Taking her back to their hideout; the place where she’d been ripped apart and been remade. Reborn into something new.

She wasn’t going down without a fight.

Snarling like a wildcat, the Spartan struggled to rise into a kneel, elbowing one of the Spooks in the face, followed by headbutting one in the face; a third wound up with a knee to the groin. Those three dropped back, struggling; a fourth swooped in, and the next thing she knew, she was jolted with electricity, and she dropped to the ground, convulsing.

“My dear one, why do you continue to fight us?”

A shadow loomed over her, and the other Spooks backed off - albeit barely, and with their guns still trained on her. It was _him -_ the leader. The one who had taken her and reshaped her into something else entirely. The one who had ruined her life. The one who controlled her; told her what to do.

Venom in her eyes, the Spartan glared at him, her lips peeled back from her teeth in a silent growl of warning. Her expression was full of hate, all directed at _him_.

To his credit, he didn’t flinch. Simply laughed and shrugged it off, as though he didn’t seem to realize - to care - that he was staring in the very face of danger. “So you _have_ learned, it seems. It took us a long time to track you down. But we found you. As I said, there is no escape. This is your destiny, dear one.”

She tried not to flinch at the nickname. She’d always hated it. She wasn’t his pet; wasn’t an animal. She was a human being, and a Spartan-III at that. She was _not his_.

“There is no use resisting. You are ours, always. We made you, and we can destroy you in an instant. You are lucky that you are so valuable, or we would have destroyed you long ago. Take care in that, dear Phoenix.”

He leaned away, and she struggled in vain to rise up and strike him down, before they knocked her out.

“My name… is not… _Phoenix_ ,” she bit out, fighting the hands that held her down, “My name… is Artemis-B312… and I… am not… _yours_!”

_There was a snap of fingers, and her world went dark._


	2. Captive Beasts

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Okay, so I kinda wasn't telling the truth when I said that I was hopefully gonna have a new chapter out for my main fic series. And, I also fibbed about the fact that Noble Team is short a man - because, indeed, they are _not_ short a man; this sixth ranger isn't always deployed with the team.
> 
> And I'm not going to reveal who he is here... I'll allow you guys to figure that out for yourselves!
> 
> Also, this might seem kinda short, but it's more of a filler chapter? In a way lol

The guards carelessly tossed her into her old cell, and Phoenix hissed as the rough landing jolted her body and jostled her wounds. She whirled up and around in a splitsecond, but a barrier was between her and the guards – and they were _laughing_ at her snarling, angry form; mocking her as they walked away and left her to the silence. The sense of loneliness pressed down on her, and she cowered in a corner of the cell – but she did not cry. She would never cry. It had been beaten out of her from the moment she’d begun to cry nonstop the second week she’d been there with them. While she had forgotten many things, the constant torture and abuse stayed with her – marking her, marring her, branding her mind for life.

“I did not expect them to throw anyone into my cell, let alone a _human_ ,” a deep, rumbling voice spoke from the shadows of the room, and Phoenix jerked, recoiling in surprise. It was a queer way of speaking; the speaker was guttural, and not only did it sound like English was not their first language, but also that it simply _could not pronounce_ the words in the same way due to a different biology. It also sounded like some device was translating for the being.

“Sangheili,” Phoenix murmured, drawing her knees to her chest and staring at the glowing spot in the darkness, where she assumed that was the light glowing in his eye. _Eye?_ That was queer. But then, perhaps, his other eye was covered – or missing, or injured badly enough that it simply no longer shone in the light.

There was a faint shuffling noise, and the Sangheili must have drawn closer, because she could now make out slaty grey skin – scales? – and the white teeth in those four mandibles. She could also see that one eye shone prehnite green, while the other was milky white, and perhaps there was even the suggestion of scarring. A soft, huffing breath was forced from his nostrils, and the mandibles flexed in what seemed to be an approximation of a shift of emotions.

“You are rather perceptive.” he answered, and for a moment, his eye gleamed brighter, as though he were amused by the fact.

“I suppose,” she dismissed carelessly, and shifted to lean her aching back against the wall behind her. The cool tile was nice against her skin, and where there were a few open wounds, it soothed them – even if the respite was only slight. “But then, that’s just my nature. I’m a Spartan, which means if I’m not perceptive enough, I’m more than likely to die on the battlefield like a green ODST on his first drop.”

A snort, and then, “I could have been mistaken for a Jiralhanae.”

Phoenix gave a sniff, before closing her eyes. “True enough, but I know the differences between each species well enough to tell them apart when they’re in the dark – and when I don’t have any armour or gadgets to assist me. Doubt I’ll have those any more, though. Especially not after the last stunt I pulled.” Her lips curled into a sneer. “ONI bastards aren’t going to let me outside. At least, not for a long time.”

“They believe they are doing the right thing.” The Sangheili made a noise that was akin to perhaps a human scoff.

“Oh, they like to _think_ that way, believe me. But they’re monsters, plain and true. And they’ll keep the likes of you and me here for many a month... many a year if you’re interesting enough. We’re no more than captive _beasts_ to them. War dogs. To be tortured and experimented on and dissected at their very beck and call. And I might owe them my life, but I would rather see those bastards rot in _hell_ before declaring them tentative allies.” Phoenix _loathed_ the Spooks. They had taken her from her parents – had killed her parents in front of her – before transporting her to Onyx, to join the ranks of the Beta Company Spartans. The memories were vague, but she knew they’d repeatedly taken her here, many times, during training. And after deployment, everything was blurrier still. Until that one fateful day when she was 13 years old; that one day where she’d slipped and made a fateful mistake, and thought she was going to die, until she’d woken up _here, alive_. Of all the things that had been taken from her – memories and the like – that was the one thing they’d _never_ let her forget. That they’d rebuilt her; rebirthed her into something new, something terrible.

That they – a rogue division of the Office of Naval Intelligence – _owned her_.

There was a noise that might have been laughter. “You are indeed fiery-spirited – even for a demon. I have yet met one who was full of such wrath, and yet you are so.” It was curious to find a chatty Sangheili – but then, she’d never really experienced them _outside_ the battlefield. Perhaps they were not so very different to humans, at least in some ways.

“Well.” Her lips curled into a sardonic smirk. “There’s a reason why I’m named Phoenix.”

“Phoenix,” the Sangheili repeated the word, “Indeed, it is a name that befits your character. I am Tha’ze ’Chadam, and I _was_ a highly-respected Ultra and Sangheili warrior. Although now.... now I am unsure what I am supposed to be.”

“It’s like that here. More often than not I don’t believe I’m a Spartan any longer. And yet... would I have held out for as long as I have if I were not? It’d be the same for you, I’d bet. You just wait and see, Tha’ze.” She repeated the name differently to him; where she paused in the middle of the word, _he_ made a noise that sounded like a click of the mandibles. A reminder that while they were similar in some ways; in others, they were so very different.

* * *

“What are we looking at?” Commander Carter Alpha Two-Five-Nine – or just Carter, to his team – braced his hands against the holotable, looking over the display which showed a holographic map of the layout of Prassius, a prominent, bustling city on the colony of Persia IX.

“Satellites are down and so are cameras – as of 0435 this morning. Which means that map you’re looking at is outdated and therefore no good to us.” His second-in-command, Lieutenant Commander Catherine Bravo Three-Two-Oh – known as Kat to her teammates – leaned a hip against the doorframe in which she stood, crossing her arms over her chest. “So if you want to track our target, you’re going to need a man on the ground.”

“I was afraid you were going to say that.” Carter pinched the bridge of his nose in frustration. “Do we know _why_ sat feeds are down?”

“Routine maintenance. Because the system is so outdated, the entire network has to be shut down, one side of the planet at a time. Currently, they’re working on the dark side of the planet – which is where we need to be. It’ll be back up in another... three-to-four hours, which is just enough time to send recon down to scout out the target. By the time recon has reported in, the system _should_ be back online.” Kat answered matter-of-factly.

“Wait, why the emphasis on _should_? Something tells me there’s more I need to know, here.” This was frustrating. The mission was not supposed to be this _complicated_. This was _supposed_ to be the time of low activity within Prassius; it should have been easy enough to momentarily take control of the cameras to scout out their target and bring them in. Unfortunately, it was apparently _not_ going to be that easy, and things were beginning to get complicated.

“Sometimes the system takes longer to boot up. Depends how much work was done on the sats.”  Kat stepped deeper into the room, stopping at the holotable and looking over the map. “Should make your decision quick, Commander. The window’s running short.” she reminded him.

Carter closed his eyes briefly, an explosive sigh escaping him before he opened them again. “I _know_.” He sighed again, more quietly this time. It looked like they were going to have to send in recon after all. He tapped a control on the holotable that would open an intercom line to the quarters three decks below where the rest of his team were located. “Oh-Three-Four, Alpha Two-Six-Six, you’re up. Quick prep a Pelican – light recon – and get down to Prassius. On the double.

Carter out.”


End file.
